Tag Archives: Dr Fox

Last week, we had an appointment with the dietician at the Luton and Dunstable hospital. We first met her earlier in the year, in between the blood tests and the skin prick tests. At the time, she said she would have to wait for the results of all the tests before beginning any food challenges with Zac, as she needed to know what was safe. Fair enough. She also said she thought it was worth getting the coeliac gene screen, as first mentioned by Dr Adam Fox. For some reason, unknown to me, even though he had requested it in the letter he sent to the consultant we were seeing at the L&D, the test was not carried out.

As the months rolled by and Zac’s skin infections become more regular, I decided to speak to my GP about it. I wondered if they could organise it, as it had been requested by a specialist, and was not just a case of a paranoid mother wasting their time. You rarely see the same GP twice at my surgery, and there are several I deliberately avoid. This time I did manage to see a new one. She is very young and I have found that the younger ones still seem to have a certain amount of drive and care, whereas the older ones at our surgery, just seem irritated by your very presence.

Today is ‘our’ first birthday. So please forgive me a reflective and self-indulgent post as I look back over my first twelve months as a blogger – a word I don’t think I had ever used just 13 months ago. The forthcoming anniversary had been on my mind lately, but due to a new job and the busy Easter holidays, I haven’t had much time to check it all out.

I thought it was around now that we got started. I knew it was April, but was not sure of the date. Bizarrely, I was clearing up from the Sunday dinner (whilst watching Julie & Julia for the umpteenth time), that I decided to have a break from the pots and pans and check today’s stats. There was a funny little icon waiting for me that looked like a trophy – it was a ‘gift’ from WordPress, to tell me that today was our birthday. Woo hoo. Spooky that I discovered this fact, whilst watching the film that made me decide to start in the first place. It was playing in the background on the evening Tom and I set up the blog. More…

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Apologies for having been ‘off air’ for so long. It has been a month and a half since I last updated the blog and in that time so ‘little’ has happened. The cooking adventures have continued and I will be posting some new recipes later in the week. Zac has had an up and down time health wise and I will also post on that. But the thing that has irritated me the most is that I have very little to share in terms of our progress with getting answers and satisfactory treatment. I have been waiting and waiting to post some results but I just can’t wait any longer so here is the update as of today.

On the 5th December 2012, we finally met our NHS consultant at the Luton and Dunstable Hospital Paediatric Gastroenterology and Allergy Clinic. This was after having been first referred in September(after much pleading and a very bad allergic reaction), having had our appointments repeatedly rejected, writing to my MP, getting our story in the national press and on TV and finally getting the clinic to call and apologise and magic up an appointment for December. Oh and we had also just met Dr Adam Fox at his private clinic at Great Ormond Street Hospital. He had confirmed that Zac should be tested for multiple allergies and wrote to my GPs advising them to manage our ongoing care, arrange blood tests and work with the Allergy clinic at the Luton and Dunstable.

So as you can imagine we were very excited on the 5th to be meeting a person that Dr Fox had mentioned by name and personally recommended. I had my letter from him with me as I felt the quickest way to get our story across was for her to read his analysis of our case. Since Zac was a baby I have described his symptoms and issues in detail to 4 different consultants and every GP at our surgery and frankly I am tired of hearing my own voice, so thought it better to ‘let him do the talking’. Dr Ashworth is a Paediatric Allergy specialist and is very familiar with Dr Fox and his work, she even calls him by his first name, so was happy to read the letter and get straight down to business. She agreed with his take on our case and agreed to arrange the blood tests he advised.